Bucks Killer Takes Own Life In Prison * Eric Motis, Convicted In 1990 Slaying Of Neighbor And Her Two Sons, Hanged Himself In His Cell, Officials Say.

January 13, 1998|by FRANK DEVLIN, The Morning Call

Eric Motis, who killed a neighbor and her two sons in Hilltown Township in 1990, killed himself in a central Pennsylvania prison Saturday morning, authorities said Monday.

"He fashioned a noose from a long bed sheet and tied it to electrical conduit at the top of his cell" at the state prison in Huntingdon, Huntingdon County, said Bucks County District Attorney Alan Rubenstein. "Then he jumped off his bed."

Prison Superintendent Frederick K. Frank said Motis, 26, was pronounced dead at 9:55 a.m. and that the state police, in keeping with state Department of Corrections policy, would be conducting an investigation.

A woman who answered the door at Motis' house at 7 Key Drive declined comment late Monday afternoon.

Motis, who lived across the street from the victims, admitted bludgeoning and stabbing 42-year-old widow Louise C. Hoopes, a secretary at Grand View Hospital in West Rockhill Township, and her sons, Douglas, 16, and Daniel, 14, as they lay in their beds. The Hoopeses were found Oct. 15 in their blood-spattered bedrooms at 12 Key Drive. A neighbor went to check on them after receiving a call from a Hoopes co-worker, who was concerned because she had failed to report to work.

Police based their case largely on information supplied by a woman who ran away with Motis before the murders to live in Miami Beach. Tracey Gross of Philadelphia told police Motis left Florida Oct. 12 his 19th birthday and returned to Miami Oct. 16 talking about the murders he had just commited.

Motis pleaded guilty to murder, rape and other charges on the first day of his 1991 trial and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison.

In a television interview later that year, he recanted and said the murders were actually committed by a man named Robert, a claim later discounted by investigators. Motis told WPVI-TV's "AM Philadelphia" that he and Robert had planned only to rob the family.

Rubenstein said Monday that he had spoken with Hoopes' brother, Thomas Baldwin of Wycombe, Bucks County, who expressed hope that Motis' suicide will provide him with some sense of closure.

Baldwin could not be reached for comment.

"His crimes were monstrous," Rubenstein said. "He killed three people in the most vicious, brutal fashion. I don't know the reason for it. Maybe this (the suicide) is how he came to grips with his guilt."

Another reason might be that Motis "had to know he would never be a free man."

"What more is there to say?" Rubenstein asked. "He's dead, and that's it."

On the day he was sentenced, Motis' mother, Annette, said her son underwent a drastic personality change during the last quarter of his senior year at Pennridge High School. Formerly a clean-cut honor student, he started growing his hair long and cutting classes. Three weeks before graduation, he dropped out of school altogether.

A woman who worked with Motis at Zoto's Diner in Hilltown when he was a teen-ager said Monday there were signs of trouble before that. Cashier Sophie Kapcsandi said Motis, who worked there as a busboy, was "a real nice boy" but also a loner.

"He must have been 15 or 16," she said. "No one really socialized with him as far as other employees were concerned. He seemed a little off.

"I feel bad," she said. "The child needed help years years ago and evidently nobody ever saw it.

"But I feel so bad about what happened to (the Hoopeses)," she said.

Evidence gathered in anticipation of Motis' trial in 1991 now looks like a foreshadowing. According to court records, a Bucks County detective said he found the following note, written by Motis, at Motis' residence in Miami Beach: "I want to die. Suicide is the solution of the end."